Day: July 20, 2013

Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder said Trayvon Martin’s death was “tragic and unnecessary.” The continuing American tragedy is the lingering racial chasm in American society. The U.S. has a black president and a black attorney general. But Paula Deen uses racial slurs, the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act and an innocent 17-year-old black youth dies because he was black and wears a hoodie.

Tuesday, Hillary Clinton and conservative blogger Erick Erickson weighed in on the Zimmermann case.

Erickson wrote, “Bad choices were made by George Zimmerman and by Trayvon Martin.” It’s easy to pick out the bad choices that George Zimmerman made. He decided not to leave the scene after the Sanford police department dispatcher warned him to get out way and let police officers handle the situation. Zimmerman’s biggest mistake, of course, was his choice to shoot an unarmed boy.

It’s much harder for me to identify the mistakes…

It took over 700 days, a recess appointment, and a nuclear-option showdown, but a prominent Republican senator yesterday took stock of his party’s efforts to reject Richard Cordray and nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He reached an interesting conclusion.

“Cordray was being filibustered because we don’t like the law” that created the consumer agency, said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “That’s not a reason to deny someone their appointment. We were wrong.”

That’s not a phrase we often hear from politicians, especially congressional Republicans, and it’s a welcome concession. Indeed, since I made the same argument on Monday, I’m delighted by Graham’s candor.

Perhaps, if Senate Republicans had come to this realization just a little sooner, Elizabeth Warren would be at the CFPB right now and Scott Brown would still be making Wall Street happy as a senator.

Regardless, the question many Senate Democrats are asking…

It seems there’s no love for America abroad, or at least there’s less of it, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. The United States’ global image has seen a steady decline since 2003 — when the Iraq invasion began — and has diminished even among longstanding allies like Britain, France and Germany.

Surveying 39 countries among 37,653 respondents, the study released on Thursday shows the percentage of people who view the U.S. positively has dropped over the last decade. The most negative impression stems from parts of the Muslim world, particularly Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt. Pakistan’s unfavorable view is no surprise, with deep-rooted tensions intensifying over the use of drones.

(MORE: Americans Abroad: When Goodwill Turns Into Gaffe)

Drone attacks, it seems, have also been an international point of contention. Half or more of people in 31 of the 39 countries surveyed disapprove of U.S. drone…

When Chris Reynolds got an email regarding his PayPal account last Friday, he was stunned to see a 17-digit balance. The mind-boggling amount — $92,233,720,368,547,800 — was about 14 digits longer than he was used to seeing there. “At first I thought that I owed quadrillions. It was quite a big surprise,” the Media, Pennsylvania resident told the Philadelphia Daily News.

(MORE: PayPal Ups Ante in Holiday Season Price-Matching Wars)

Reynolds has used the online payment service for the past 10 years to buy and sell items on eBay, such as vintage parts. He estimates that typically he averages no more than $100 in transactions a month.

A quadrillion dollars—which is actually a real number—is just about 1300 times more than the world’s GDP, which is approximately $70 trillion a year. That’s leagues above the net worth of Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates, who reclaimed his spot…

When a masked robber showed up at Wolf’s Groceries in Marshfield, Wis. on Monday, he probably didn’t expect a fight from its 96-year-old owner, Margaretta Wolf. The elderly store owner—who has run the grocery for 54 years—stood her ground and refused to capitulate to the robber’s demands, despite the fact that he was holding a three-inch knife.

(MORE: Dunkin’ Donuts Employee Stops Robbery with Hot Coffee)

“I said: ‘I’m not opening up that cash register and that’s it, I’m not opening it. I said you can have all the Tootsie Rolls you want but I am not opening that cash register,'” Wolf told the Associated Press.

The would-be robber continued to order Wolf around, telling her to walk to the back of the store. Wolf refused. “I’ll press a button and I’ll have somebody here in seconds,” she recalls telling the crook.

The masked man finally…

Animals can become viral stars for any number of reasons: a hilariously grumpy face, an exquisite fashion sense or even just a ridiculous amount of cuteness. But Schoep, the German Shepherd mix who just died at age 20 on Wednesday, owed his internet fame to a photograph taken last summer.

(MORE: Elton, the ‘Gay’ Shelter Dog, Is Adopted, and the Internet Breathes a Sigh of Relief)

The original image, captured by photographer Hannah Stonehouse Hudson, featured the dog and his owner, John Unger, sharing a peaceful moment in Lake Superior. As the Pioneer Press reports, Unger, of Bayfield, Wisc., began taking his then 19-year-old pet into the water to help soothe the dog’s joint pain from arthritis. The buoyancy of the water, he found, helped lull Schoep to sleep. Unger’s friend Hudson, who wanted to capture the pair’s relationship, snapped the now-famous photo one evening and posted…

1. Detroit, Rocked City

   Facing around $20 billion in debt (it’s telling that no one seems to know the exact amount), Detroit has become the largest American city to file for bankruptcy. At one point, Detroit was the country’s fourth most populous city. From the NYT: “For Detroit, the filing came as a painful reminder of a city’s rise and fall.”

   Some Disassembly Required: In recent years, Detroit has been emptied of a huge percentage of its residents, leaving thousands of abandoned buildings behind. For a city that was built on building things, it’s strange that one of their key goals is to demolish things quickly enough to save the city. Here’s an interesting 2011 article from GQ’s Howie Kahn: Destroying Detroit (in Order to Save It).

   + Nate Silver spotted a 2200 square foot home in Detroit that is selling for a buck.

   +…